A Burnham-On-Sea mother has told of her “really frightening close escape” after her son’s mobile phone caught fire while it was being charged overnight.
The family’s Burnham home was left filled with “toxic smoke” following the 3am incident with a Motorola G6 phone.
She told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “My son’s phone decided to go into meltdown whilst on charge. He woke up at 3am disoriented with his room filled with smoke and extremely scared.”
“His phone was on his bed next to him and was stuck to his sheets where the case began to melt.”
“The mains-connected smoke alarms hadn’t gone off, but the whole of our downstairs had a haze of toxic smelling smoke.
“It was really frightening – a close escape for us all.”
She adds: “My son had gone to bed as normal, plugged in his phone to charge overnight and has it on his bed as he uses the alarm to get up for college.”
“Not unlike the rest of us, he often uses uses it until he goes to sleep listening to music or scrolling through social media.”
“He felt heat against his back which is what woke him up at 3am. He says he heard his phone making crackling and hissing noises, and he stumbled out of bed.”
“He was very disoriented as his room was already full of smoke, which was from the melting plastic on the back of the phone and case, but eventually he managed to make his way to the door next to which was the light switch, keeping his head together calmly, and went back to his bed and removed the charger plug from the socket and the phone, then came straight up to us to alert us all his phone was melting down and there was smoke everywhere.”
“We were so lucky he woke up and kept his cool dealing with the very frightening situation, very quickly and calmly making everything safe otherwise things could have been so much worse.”
“This could happen to anyone, we learn from our mistakes. If you can charge your phone when you are awake it is a lot safer and I’d also suggest people make sure their alarms are fit for purpose.”
“Our alarms downstairs are heat sensitive, not smoke sensitive because we didn’t want them going off every time someone burnt the toast.”
“They are not good enough and we will be purchasing actual smoke alarms since even though his room was filled with smoke which had begun to fill the rest of the downstairs no alarms went off.”
